The Holy Woman (17 page)

Her father’s hand on her shoulder ruthlessly broke the contact from across the room. Chilled, Zarri Bano dropped her gaze, withdrawing once again into the shell of numbness she had built around herself. When her father called her name, she raised empty eyes at him. Smiling, with love shining out of his eyes, he congratulated her and kissed her on the top of her cloaked head. Then her grandfather, Siraj Din, came to her and did the same. Turning to Ruby, Habib told her to take Zarri Bano into the other room as the ceremony was now over.

With a confident gait, Habib stepped off the stage, and went to accept his guests’ congratulations and the placing of money garlands around his neck. Zarri Bano, flanked dutifully by Sakina and Ruby on either side, was quietly led away through the crowd of bemused
guests. Nobody dared approach Zarri Bano or had the temerity to come and congratulate her or place garlands around her neck. It was a noticeable omission. In the minds of many was the question: ‘What is there to congratulate? A young woman caged into a barren life!’

On reaching the door of the hall, Zarri Bano
discovered
the exit was semi-barred by Sikander. First she shot him a look of surprise. Then a shuttered expression descended in her eyes as she looked over his shoulders and beyond into the other room.

It was then that Sikander painfully accepted his defeat. Impotent to do anything, he stepped awkwardly back into the hall and stared around at the guests. Had everyone in that room gone mad? What was the
mubarak
for? Were they celebrating the imprisonment of a woman? Had nobody the guts to have stopped it? Did that
buzurg
actually perform a ceremony? What sort of ceremony was that? Did he substitute the Holy Quran for a groom? Was Zarri Bano wedded to her faith, instead of a living man?

His mother, Bilkis, tugged at his arm and gently led him out of the room. She had watched him nervously, trying to follow the train of his thoughts. Bilkis feared both for him and Zarri Bano. Now in her new role, Zarri Bano was forbidden from mixing freely with the male sex. Before Sikander left the hall, he turned and caught Habib’s eye. The two men stared steadily at one another. Habib’s eyes were triumphant while Sikander’s flashed sheer hatred and disbelief.

Glancing from one to the other, Bilkis pulled her son out of the hall and into the marquee on the lawn. The dinner was already being served by the turbaned chefs when Bilkis sat at the table. Sikander looked down at his mother as if she had gone mad. ‘What is the matter,
my son? Sit down and eat. It is all over!’ she whispered, looking up at him in concern.

‘Sit down and eat!’ he mimicked, shaking his head in disbelief at her. ‘Mother, I am going out of my mind. I cannot eat! I don’t know why I came. In my heart, I still foolishly believed that, somehow, Zarri Bano wouldn’t go through with this farce, and that somebody, somewhere would put a stop to it. But we have all failed her and colluded with her father. I am going, Mother. This place is hell! Everybody’s gone mad!’

He stormed out of the marquee, not caring that some of the guests had overheard each and every word, and were staring agog at him and his mother. Bilkis, in an embarrassed silence, stood up and, smiling awkwardly, followed her son out of the
kothi
, and out of Zarri Bano’s life.

Fireworks and rockets were lit and shot into the sky, bursting into thousands of small speckled stars, much to the delight of the guests and small children from neighbouring families. Like a colourful garland of flowers, the lights were a merry beacon to neighbouring places and people, letting them know that jollity was still afoot in Habib’s home.

To end the celebrations, Habib had arranged for a group of musicians to perform folk songs for the guests. The men, with their various musical instruments including the tabla drums, sat cross-legged on a raised cushioned platform in one of the marquees.

Soon they had everyone swaying to the sound and rhythm of their music. First they sang religious verses, focusing on the life of the prophet Mohammed, and then secular ones, celebrating love and human passion.
Sounds of sheer enjoyment were punctuated by the words, ‘
Wa wa!
’ from every quarter. Some guests either jumped out of their seats to dance or fell in a delirious trance, their heads swaying from side to side and their feet tapping to the beat of the tabla drums and the clapping of hands.

Spellbound and in the throes of musical enjoyment himself, Habib tapped a beat with his fingers on the armrest of his chair, as he sat in front of his male guests. The music had washed away all the tensions of the day from his body. He looked around the marquee for his wife, wondering whether she was listening too – but Shahzada was nowhere to be seen!

His wife was in Zarri Bano’s room, trying to coax her eldest daughter to eat something. Since the ceremony, Zarri Bano had said very little and had eaten nothing. She sat in her black veil on the edge of her bed, staring at her mother and sister as they perched on the sofa in front of her.

‘Please, Zarri Bano, you must eat something,’ Shahzada pleaded.

‘I am not hungry, Mother,’ Zarri Bano replied quietly, her eyes seeming to look right through her.

‘You will become ill, my princess.’ Shahzada got up and gathered her daughter into her arms. Standing passively in the embrace, Zarri Bano’s arms stayed by her side.

‘I cannot eat, Mother,’ she said at last, pushing Shahzada gently away from her. ‘Please go. You have guests to attend to. Ruby, you too must go, my darling. I know you love the musicians – I can hear them from here. I will be all right. After all, brides are normally left alone at the end.’

Mother and younger daughter stared at one another. She had used the word bride!

I
T WAS PAST
midnight. Most of Habib’s guests had gone to sleep in their allocated rooms. A small group of them, however, remained sitting together in the
marquee
on the lawn and continued to discuss the day’s events.

Shahzada, as the hostess, left them to it – she had had enough. Going to her daughter’s room and peering inside, she found it in darkness. Thinking that Zarri Bano was asleep, Shahzada quietly closed the door. She then stood in the corridor, loath to enter her own room and be alone with her husband.

When she finally entered, in the semi-darkness, Shahzada’s chest heaved in silent rage. How could her husband sleep peacefully? She glided silently around the room and didn’t see Habib sit upright in his bed.

The moonlight from the window streaming into their room cast shadows on the wall. ‘Have they all gone to sleep?’ he asked quietly. Shahzada’s hand froze in mid-air, in the sleeve of her night-shirt
kurta
. Her shoulders stiffening, she didn’t reply nor turn round to face him. Instead, she walked into the bathroom adjoining their room.

Disappointed, Habib lay back on his pillow, his eyes staring at the ceiling. When Shahzada returned to the room and climbed quietly into her own bed, he waited for her to speak. She said nothing. He gasped in
surprise
. It was never like this before!

‘It was a great ceremony. Shahzada, wasn’t it?’ His words sliced through her, stinging her into responding as nothing else would have done.

‘Yes, it was a great ceremony – for
you
, Habib!’ she spat bitterly.

‘For me? What about you?’ he asked, turning his face towards her. She was staring at him with her wide, eloquent eyes.

‘For
me
, Habib?’ She almost choked on the words. ‘To sacrifice my daughter to such a fate – do you call that great?’

He struggled to keep hold of his temper. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go about spouting such nonsense. If you say that, as a mother, what will other people say?’

‘I am not concerned about what other people say, Habib.’

He flinched at her impolite way of addressing him by his first name without her customary respectful term
jee
. It was a deliberate and insulting omission on her part.

‘All I know is that you have won. You have finally achieved what you have always craved in your heart for your daughter. Your son’s death gave you the ideal excuse,’ Shahzada continued inexorably and
unafraid
.

‘What are you saying, Shahzada! This is so unfair …’

‘Unfair!’ she screeched, sitting bolt upright. ‘Don’t talk to me about fairness! Is it fair to forcefully prevent your daughter from marrying? You never really meant to marry her off to any man, did you? Especially not to Sikander. Oh, no. You love her too much. She is your treasure, your possession, and you couldn’t stomach the thought of another man—’

‘
Silence
! You stupid, stupid woman.’ Sitting up, he glared at her, his hand trembling on the quilt. ‘You do
not know what you are saying.’ He desperately tried to control his anger and the rapid beat of his heart.

‘Yes, Habib, you are right. I
am
a stupid woman. For only a really
stupid
woman would have let her daughter go through that pantomime of a ceremony – just in order to please you. What I do know is that I hate you, Habib, so much for sacrificing our beautiful daughter.’ She turned her back to him, her heart thumping against her ribs. Her mouth was parched. She had never spoken to her husband in such a vein before or with such venom.

Thoroughly shaken by his wife’s unexpected
outburst
and her seething hatred, Habib fell back on his pillow. As he stared into the darkness around him, his mind tossed the question at him:
Do I really love my daughter too much? Did I really not want her to marry anybody? Am I such a possessive father?
‘No! No!’ he screamed silently in denial. ‘It was Jafar’s death. We must never forget that!’

Zarri Bano lay in the dark with her eyes wide open, wrapped in the silky cocoon of the
burqa
. She hadn’t taken it off, for there was no reason to. Life seemed to have lost all its meaning and momentum. Today had been the strangest day of her life. She couldn’t yet begin to make sense of the physical and mental numbness that had seized her from the moment she had embraced the
burqa
. Her stomach had moaned with hunger, but her mouth refused to take anything in. The tray of food remained untouched on her dressing table.

She didn’t know exactly when she fell asleep, but she must have done so for when she woke up, light was streaming through the gaps in the drawn curtains. Zarri Bano’s eyes journeyed tentatively around the
room. Memories of the ceremony assaulting her, she tightly shut her eyes again, desperately, wishing that it had all been a dream.

Her hand crept to her cropped head; the spiky shards felt unfamiliar under her fingers. The rustle of the
burqa
reminded her that she was still wearing it. Feeling
suffocated
all of a sudden, she had the violent urge to tear it off.

Holding tightly onto her quilt, Zarri Bano told
herself
, ‘I do not have to wear it, least of all in bed.’ There were no rules about wearing it. It was, however, a
striking
symbol of her new role. How else would people recognise her as the Holy Woman? ‘Hence I will always have to wear it,’ she reminded herself bitterly.

In the shower room, in one swift movement she peeled off the black garment and threw it onto the marble tiled floor. Immediately she bent down to retrieve it, and then hung it carefully on one of the pegs on the wall, mentally reprimanding herself. ‘This is to become my second skin. I must learn to like and respect it. To want to tear it away is tantamount to destroying a part of myself – my new identity.’

Stepping out of her under-garments, Zarri Bano stood under the showerhead, letting the warm water cascade down over her body as she began to lather
herself
with soap. Catching sight of herself in the
mirror-like
shine of the tiles, she let her gaze dwell on her body, moving over each contour. Then, closing her eyes tight, she blocked out the image on the tiles. She had always been pleased with what Allah had graced her with.

Her face held up to the shower spray, Zarri Bano let the water wash away the salty tears from her cheeks. ‘This should have been my first wedding ritual bath
after a night spent not alone, but with somebody.’ Sikander’s face loomed all of a sudden in front of her eyes. She could still remember the shape and the sensual texture of his lips.

‘How am I going to come to terms with a longing that has to be denied and to a life of total sterility?’ her heart cried.

What she wouldn’t do was deny herself the luxury of dwelling, for the last time, on her past life and the people who featured in it. Later she would ruthlessly, and for ever, shut the door on that compartment of her mind labelled ‘the past’. ‘I will,’ she vowed, ‘but not today.’

Today, she would allow her mind and heart to luxuriate in the past and the lost life of Zarri Bano and what would have been if Jafar hadn’t died. ‘He said that I would remember him until the day I died. How can I forget you? I want you, Sikander!’ she wept.

Her hand held against her stomach muscles she doubled over in pain, a cry of anguish mingling with the sound of the water spray. How would she ever be able to quell the ache of an empty, forgotten womb, the longing to cradle a child against her breast. ‘I want children too, like other women,
Allah pak
!’ she beseeched.

It was the longest shower she had taken in her life. Physically refreshed, the desolation, however, was marked in her heart, bones and eyes. Drying herself she changed into fresh underclothes. Going to her
wardrobe
she looked for the simplest and most dowdy of outfits. Glancing at all the elegant clothes hanging there, chiffons, crêpes, cotton, lawns and velvets, her hand lingered on the black chiffon outfit she had worn on the day when she had first seen Sikander.

With a quick flourish she drew out all the outfits and dumped them onto the floor of her room, including the black one. ‘They have no purpose in my life now,’ she said. She would ask Fatima to take them away.

Eventually she decided to wear a plain linen suit. Much to her dismay, her eyes once again smarted with tears. Today she should have been bedecked in the most elaborate of bridal outfits in glorious colours. There would have been an air of excitement and gaiety around the place. But then, if it had been her wedding, she wouldn’t have been in her own bedroom. She would have been in Karachi, in Sikander’s home, and in his bedroom or in Singapore …

Zarri Bano strode to the dressing table and draped a towel over the tall mirror, blocking out the image of her short hair. With no face to make up no curls to twist and set elaborately in place, no angling in front of it to see how she looked, the mirror had lost its functional use.

She swiped the dressing-table top clear of bottles, creams, lotions, sachets and perfumes. Dropping
everything
into a large carrier bag, she knotted it tight. Now only a comb, a tube of hand cream, and a tub of
moisturising
cream stood on the stark, clean surface. From the drawers, she took out the velvet boxes of jewellery. Opening each one she gazed at its contents. Silver, gold, rubies, opals and emeralds sparkled in front of her face. Closing the boxes, one by one, she placed them in a pile on one corner of the dressing table. She would hand them over to her sister and Cousin Gulshan. ‘My only ornament in life now is going to be the veil, the
burqa
,’ she told the shrouded mirror.

Her wet hair combed, Zarri Bano slipped back into the
burqa
, assessing her reaction to it. Strangely, it
didn’t feel too bad. With a serene expression schooled in her eyes and face, Zarri Bano left her room. The
burqa
swished with each step she took. As she passed her parents’ room, the door opened and her father stepped out. Visibly disconcerted, his eyes swept nervously over her beveiled body. Zarri Bano painfully held on to her control. How can he look at me like this, with such horror? she thought. When it is he who has forced me into it!

Immediately pitying her father, she nodded
pleasantly
at him. The past was over. They had both to accept and reconcile themselves to the present.
Dutifully
she bade him, ‘
Assalam-Alaikum
, Father,’ and walked on.

‘
Wa Laikum-Salam
, my daughter,’ he answered quietly, following closely behind, his mind somehow unable to reconcile the two images of her. This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? The
burqa
was an important part of that equation. He couldn’t surely have his daughter as a figure of fashion as
Shahzadi Ibadat
. Religious piety and glamour had never gone hand-in-hand.

Watching her descend the stairs, the loathing he felt for that black
thing
signalled to him forcefully that he would never get used to it. Did the head part have to be shaped at such an ugly angle? he fretted. Couldn’t it have been a loose wrap that she could casually drape around her head and shoulders, rather than this severe, unbecoming sack of a garment? She was like a black ghost. His daughter had epitomised style and fashion. Surely she didn’t have to wear this shapeless sack at home? He would have to talk to her about it.

Unaware of her father’s thoughts, Zarri Bano had by now reached the dining room. On seeing her, some
guests stopped talking. They watched her move around the room, intrigued and uneasy at the same time.

Gulshan was the first to recover and stepped forward to greet her cousin with a smile. ‘Zarri Bano, come and sit down with me. I wasn’t sure whether you were awake, otherwise I would have come upstairs and helped you to dress.’

‘Why? To help me to choose one of my trousseau outfits, perhaps?’ Zarri Bano replied dryly, lifting the hem of the
burqa
to reveal the shabby suit she wore underneath. Gulshan’s eyes widened.

‘What did you expect – my bright orange
lengha
that you and my mother ordered from the best tailors in Lahore? I am not a bride to be decked up; after all, I am supposed now to be a devout woman – a woman of simple taste,’ retorted Zarri Bano. ‘It matters to me very little now what I look like, Gulshan. For you see, vanity is one thing that I have managed to exorcise from the old Zarri Bano. Do you know, I thought that would be the hardest thing to do, but I have managed it quite easily.’

‘But you will not be wearing this all the time, surely?’ Gulshan stuttered. ‘It is only a symbolic covering. Even women in purdah do not wear it all the time, only when they go out. At home they dress like queens.’

‘Gulshan, please remember that I am not in
purdah
, to be hidden behind four walls. I can do whatever and go wherever I like, within the parameters of my role and the different demands that it makes on me as a person and as a Holy Woman. I must now live up to that name and learn to adapt to a life of simplicity and humility and, wherever possible, avoid any contact with men.’ As she spoke, Zarri Bano looked at her
father. He had heard everything, she knew, for he had dropped his gaze.

Ruby, standing behind Zarri Bano, found these words painful, having noticed the signs of grief on her sister’s drawn face. She, herself, had wept half the night.

Zarri Bano’s smile faltered a little as she beheld the tears shining in Ruby’s brown eyes.

‘Ruby, darling. You and Gulshan can look at my jewellery and split it up between you, for I have no use for ornaments any longer.’

Ruby couldn’t bear it. Her chest heaving, she fled from the room. It was as if Zarri Bano was dying before her eyes and bidding them farewell.

Once she reached her room, Ruby wept bitterly. For the rest of the day, she kept away from her sister, unable to bear the sight of the hideous black garment draping that shapely body.
Burqa
and Zarri Bano just simply did not go together! If only Jafar had still been alive today, Zarri Bano would have been returning from her in-laws’ by now, and instead of the black garment, she would have been dressed in all her wedding finery. A marvellous gem glittering amongst other gems, with a strikingly good-looking groom by her side. Now, wherever Zarri Bano went she would stand out as a dark forbidding figure – disconcerting all who came in
contact
with her.